Many People Have Phobias Of Many Different Kinds, But We Don't Really Know Why Some Folk Have A Problem And Others Don't. Research Will Surely Continue Until The Human Brain Is Better Understood

It is somewhat surprising to realise just how many individuals have some type of phobia. A phobia is simply having a permanent fear of something or set of circumstances which the sufferer will go out of their way to avoid under any circumstances. A lot of us are aware people who are scared of spiders or who can’t cope with heights. Everyone, including the sufferer, realises that the fear is actually quite absurd but that doesn’t prevent the phobia from potentially causing major problems for the people who suffers.

To the best of my knowledge, and I think that science says the same, almost all phobias can be linked to a specific incident in which the individual suffered from a unpleasant experience, and any perceived recurrence of something like it prompts the brain to respond in in the same fashion as it did on the first occasion.

Phobias generally fall into two distinct categories. These are called specific phobias and social phobias. Specific phobias are the ones where a particular object causes the issue, as with spiders (as mentioned earlier), snakes, water, heights and so on. Social phobias are focused on situations in which the sufferer becomes uncomfortable – public speaking or eating in front of other people, for example.

Focusing on specific phobias, it is very easy to work out how being pushed unexpectedly into the sea as a child might cause someone to develop a fear of water, or having a nasty fall as a child could make someone wary of heights, being bitten by a dog could develop into a fear of all dogs and harming an eye would logically make you twitchy about having your eyes assessed at the optician, as it would indeed if you needed Laser eye surgery or some other treatment also. What is harder to work out is why some individuals react to what happened by developing a phobia, whilst other individuals will just forget what happened to them and it will make no difference to their lives.

There are treatments which can help to ease the problem, but since we still don’t really comprehend what causes something to become a phobia, those treatments will differ from one individual to another. As we all know, issues relating to the mind are far more involved and difficult to treat than straightforward health complaints. Fevers can be beaten by medication, broken limbs can heal, defective hearts can be operated on and problems with eyesight can be rectified by lenses or Laser eye surgery, but a complaint within the human brain is firstly more complex to diagnose and secondly, more difficult to treat.

The effects of specific phobias can often be reduced by getting the sufferer to face the cause of the problem under controlled circumstances. This might be by way of a virtual reality situation, or utilising of photos and live footage or coming face to face with the phobia in a normal situation. Each option will be good for some people and probably not for others. There’s no quick fix and no one particular treatment for these problems. Even with the incredible progress in medicine and surgery, the one part of the body that we really don’t fully understand is the human brain.

However, scientists are always trying to find out more and I wouldn’t mind betting that one day a minor problem like a fear of mice will be removed basically by hitting one brain cell with the beam from a Laser eye to make it correct its behaviour, but that won’t be in my lifetime. Also, I’m not sure that anybody should be aiming Laser eye beams at any part of the brain until they know for sure what other impact there could be elsewhere in such an intricate organ, so let’s just say that this won’t be happening any time soon!